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Arecibo's bright pixels fall in permanently shadowed craters

Arecibo's bright pixels fall in permanently shadowed craters

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NASA / JHUAPL / CIW

Arecibo's bright pixels fall in permanently shadowed craters
The highest-resolution radar image of Mercury's north polar region made from the Arecibo Observatory (Harmon et al., Icarus, 211, 37-50, 2011) is shown in yellow on a mosaic of MESSENGER orbital images. Radar-bright features in the Arecibo image all lie in areas mapped as in shadow in MESSENGER images to date, consistent with the proposal that radar-bright materials contain water ice.

This image is shown in a polar stereographic projection with every 5° of latitude and 30° of longitude indicated and with 0° longitude at the bottom. On Mercury, 5° of latitude is approximately 213 km.

Most NASA images are in the public domain. Reuse of this image is governed by NASA's image use policy.

Original image data dated on or about March 22, 2012

Explore related images: radio telescopes, pretty pictures, Mercury, MESSENGER, geology, explaining science, radar imaging

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